College plans tech school at Bletchley Park

Immortalised in the film The Imitation Game, Bletchley Park, home to the UK’s legendary codebreakers during the Second World War, is the subject of a planning application by Milton Keynes College to turn a selection of listed buildings into a technology school.

The Milton Keynes College scheme, said to be worth £26m, is currently seeking council approval. It would see the currently derelict buildings in Block D, built in 1942-1943 and used in the efforts to crack Germany’s Enigma codes, transformed into a facility for up to 1,000 students with spaces for seminars, events and student support.

The new facility would be one of 12 institutes of technology that the UK government is planning to set up across the country to provide a vocational alternative to university.  The UK’s first National College of Cyber Security opened at the Bletchley Park site in 2018 in an effort to nurture the country’s cyber talent.

The BBC has reported that in making the planning application to the local council, architecture firm GSS gave an assurance that the new development would retain as much of the character of the existing building as possible.

“The Block D Institute of Technology will provide much-needed education facilities, enabling people in Milton Keynes and the surrounding area to aspire to higher levels of attainment, in providing skillsets, benefiting local employers and creating opportunities for entrepreneurs to start up new business initiatives,” it was reported to have said in the application.